{"id":98595,"date":"2021-01-21T17:44:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T22:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=98595"},"modified":"2021-03-11T23:26:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T04:26:40","slug":"penguins-lose-marcus-pettersson-juuso-riikola-to-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/01\/21\/penguins-lose-marcus-pettersson-juuso-riikola-to-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins Lose Marcus Pettersson and Juuso Riikola to Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/penguins\/\" target=\"_self\">Pittsburgh Penguins <\/a>head coach, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/sullimi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Sullivan<\/a><\/strong>, announced today that two of the team&#8217;s defencemen, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/p\/pettema01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marcus Pettersson<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/r\/riikoju01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Juuso Riikola<\/a> will be out for an extended period due to injury. Sullivan anticipates Pettersson to be week-to-week, while Riikola is likely to be out of the lineup long term.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Coach Sullivan: \u201cMarcus Pettersson will be week-to-week with an upper-body injury. Juuso is longer-term.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More updates from Coach \u2b07\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1MawzUveTg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/1MawzUveTg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/penguins\/status\/1352349408113942528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 21, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Penguins&#8217; Marcus Pettersson and Juuso Riikola Injured<\/h2>\n<p>Both players sustained injuries during their 5-4 overtime loss to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/capitals\/\" target=\"_self\">Washington Capitals<\/a> on January 20. Pettersson left the ice during the second period of the game after taking an open-ice hit from Capitals forward <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/o\/oshietj01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">T.J. Oshie<\/a><\/strong>. Riikola played through two periods of the game, but never returned to the bench for the third period. Both players are listed as having upper-body injuries and will both miss some time<\/p>\n<p>Petterson, a second-round pick from the 2014 NHL Entry Draft, has appeared in all four of Pittsburgh&#8217;s games this year. He has notched one assist so far. Last season he put up his second-best season statistically, scoring two goals and 20 assists for 22 total points. Riikola was a European signing for the club ahead of the 2018-19 season. He has played in 75 games with the Penguins in which he has notched three goals and nine assists for 12 points on his short NHL career.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means for the Future<\/h3>\n<p>Both players are depth defenders for the ageing Penguins. Pettersson established himself last season as a valuable left-handed option last season and was looking to continue that trend. With both players being out, this likely leaves room for top Penguins defence prospect<strong> Pierre-Oliver Joseph<\/strong>. Drafted as the 23rd pick in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, he was a key return for the penguins in the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kesseph01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Phil Kessel<\/a><\/strong> deal two summers ago. Lasts season with the team&#8217;s AHL affiliate he played 52 games and put up three goals and 14 assists. He is a bright spot in the Penguins shallow prospect pool, and his debut has been a few seasons in the making.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"Lo_V5fh0TRNfO8271_fYsw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/1230702345\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'Lo_V5fh0TRNfO8271_fYsw',sig:'YRXGz9A_2DiL4O2rWIHSvYobz8IToa1yOeji-j3ISRM=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1230702345',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pittsburgh Penguins head coach, Mike Sullivan, announced today that two of the team&#8217;s defencemen, Marcus Pettersson and Juuso Riikola will be out for an extended period due to injury. Sullivan anticipates Pettersson to be week-to-week, while Riikola is likely to be out of the lineup long term. Coach Sullivan: \u201cMarcus Pettersson will be week-to-week with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3463,"featured_media":98600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4547,6671,34,4548],"tags":[3320,3630],"class_list":["post-98595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-penguins","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","tag-juuso-riikola","tag-marcus-pettersson"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}